The Adjustment Bureau

The Adjustment Bureau is a 2011 American film loosely based on the Philip K. Dick short story, "Adjustment Team".
A romantic thriller, the film was written and directed by George Nolfi and stars Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.
The cast also includes Anthony Mackie, John Slattery, Michael Kelly, and Terence Stamp.

On the brink of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, ambitious politician David Norris (Damon) meets beautiful contemporary ballet dancer Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) - a woman like none he's ever known. But just as he realizes he's falling for her, mysterious men conspire to keep the two apart. David learns he is up against the agents of Fate itself--the men of The Adjustment Bureau--who will do everything in their considerable power to prevent David and Elise from being together. In the face of overwhelming odds, he must either let her go and accept a predetermined path...or risk everything to defy Fate and be with her.

Heavy topics are gingerly handled in "The Adjustment Bureau," possibly the breeziest movie yet to be adapted from a story by Philip K. Dick, the drug-fueled, possibly psychotic science-fiction writer who also inspired "Blade Runner," "Total Recall" and "Minority Report." Dick's original story addressed notions of insanity, death and God; the movie version mentions free will but is mostly concerned with love.

Writer and debut director George Nolfi (who co-wrote "The Bourne Ultimatum") deftly juggles seriousness and self-satire, depicting the bureaucrats as beleaguered rank-and-filers even while treating the star-crossed lovers with great tenderness. Damon and Blunt are terrific together; it's impossible not to root for them. All the wit and charm, however, are obliterated by the movie's sappy, preachy, thoroughly Hollywood ending. For a while there, "The Adjustment Bureau" almost escaped the inevitable.

Anyway, the point is: True love is a powerful force. That's a perfectly fine premise. It's a shame the dialogue is laden with clichés, and loopholes to the adjustment concept abound. Turns out the bureau is not as omniscient as they purport — hats, doorways and rain can at least temporarily throw these stealthy operatives off the case. And then there's the element of chance, which still inexplicably figures into this deterministic vision.

The Adjustment Bureau is compelling enough, a sort of Inception-lite, but the plot holes take it off course. Still, this mind-meld of sci-fi thriller, morality play and passionate romance is worth seeing, mostly for the palpable chemistry between the lead actors.

Critics generally gave the film generally positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 72% based on 208 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6 out of 10. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of a maximum four stars, describing the movie as "a smart and good movie that could have been a great one if it had been a little more daring. I suspect the filmmakers were reluctant to follow its implications too far." The New York Times called the film "a fast, sure film about finding and keeping love across time and space... [which] has brightened the season with a witty mix of science-fiction metaphysics and old-fashioned romance."